Hope Community Garden Update

Looking East over the future raised-beds and cold-frames of the Hope Garden

Over the past couple months Blue Sky Builders of Espanola, NM have made steady progress on the community/demonstration garden project at the Community Pantry in Gallup. The perimeter fences have been built, the retaining walls of the garden beds built, and four rainwater harvesting tanks installed. The later coming just in time to capture the winter snowfall- all four tanks were filled to the brim (around 10,000 gallons) and over-flowing, yet no valves or plumbing had been installed (a hard thing to do when fighting so much water pressure).

On my 1500 gallon rainwater tank, I lost a full load of water the first winter it was installed when the 2" ball valve cracked during a week of sub-freezing weather. Insulation and an electric pipe warmer have since solved that problem. However, if I had chosen a more sun-exposed location for the plastic valve, I doubt I'd have any problem, as is the case at the Hope Garden's tanks. Three of the four cold-frames they've planned have been fitted together, still waiting their protective plastic covers and rich soil. I'll meet with the Community Pantry staff soon and post an interview on the specific status of this great project.

Hope Community Garden

A cold-frame and rainwater tanks awaiting installation

The large tan and green building at the corner north of the Miuramira over-pass is a common sight to most Gallupian's, but few know that within that building, in addition to a professional USDA kitchen, meeting rooms (both available for a modest rental fee), and immaculately clean warehouse, the Community Food Pantry collects and distributes over 3 million pounds of food each year to two of our nation's hungriest counties. It's a fact; Mckinley County ranks as one of the hungriest (food insecurity index) counties in America.  All this on a budget of $300,000-- at a modest $1/pound of distributed food, thats a 10:1 return on contributions. 

Jim Harlin's Community Pantry

Starting next year, the harvest of the Hope Community Garden will be joining the massive poundage of NAPI potatoes (Navajo grown with the water of the San Juan, just south of Farmington), bartered Arizona lettuce and vegetables (traded for potatoes), and Wal-mart surplus that's given away each year. With a $250,000 grant, the Community Pantry is building a vegetable garden, complete with 4, 20'x30' cold-frames for year-round produce, and a large demonstration dry-land field of indigenous corn, beans, and squash. But, as Executive Director Jim Harlin starkly pointed out during the tour, serendipitously arranged by WNMU, while the garden will grow an impressive 14,000 lbs. of food each year, that dramatic number represents only a drop in the bucket of their annual distributions and less than half a semi-truck trailer of food (40,000 lbs); the real unit of food measurement in this hungry county.  Gardening space will be available for rent to the public, and much more could be developed on the 2+ acres of undeveloped land owned by the Community Pantry in the years to come.

Excavations for the retaining wall supporting the above-ground beds and cold frames

Please, support The Community Pantry with your labor and/or checkbook! Also, buy 2 turkeys at T&R Market in Yah-ta-Hey, (my school's business partner!) for $0.49/lb, and donate the second to the food pantry to feed local families this Thanksgiving. Also watch for The Food Network's Dinner Impossible host Nigel filming his show at the Community Pantry's demonstration kitchen during this December's Red Rock Balloon Rally.